A headrest for a vehicle protects a user's neck or head from injury due to the tilting of his or her neck in the event of a car crash, and enables the head to come into close contact therewith under normal driving conditions, thus enabling the user to keep a comfortable posture. Such a headrest is mounted on an upper end of a seat back to support a passenger's head and neck, and is composed of a pad made of a cushion material and a headrest pole connected to a seat frame. The headrest pole is connected to the seat frame to be movable up and down, so that a height of the headrest pole is adjusted to fit a passenger's height.
Conventionally, the wings of a winged headrest for surrounding the head comfortably and easily as well as the height of the headrest are important. To this end, Korean Patent No. 10-0775371 B1 discloses an apparatus for adjusting a position of a headrest. The apparatus includes: left and right support parts that are provided on both sides of an upper end of a seat to be spaced apart from each other; a headrest that is interposed between the left and right support parts to support the head, and is movable back and forth; left and right fixing guide members that are installed in the left and right support parts such that surfaces of the members are exposed; an elastic plate spring that is installed in the headrest to be curved while having an elastic force, and is fixed at both ends thereof to the left and right fixing guide members; a through hole that accommodates the elastic plate spring and is formed across the headrest to define a space for changing a direction of the curved shape of the elastic plate spring; and a fixing hinge pin that is provided in a central portion of the elastic plate spring to protrude vertically and is fixedly embedded in the headrest.
However, the conventional headrest is operated with respect to a hinge and is configured such that the wings on both ends of the headrest are fixed to adjusted positions by friction between the fixing part and an actuating part. Since there is no device for fixing the wings after they are operated, a user should exert much power to adjust the headrest when a frictional force is too large, and the headrest may return to its original position by a head support weight when the frictional force between the fixing part and the actuating part is too small. However, it is difficult to standardize and apply a proper actuating force (frictional force) because it is very different from individual to individual.
The foregoing is intended merely to aid in the understanding of the background of the present disclosure, and is not intended to mean that the present disclosure falls within the purview of the related art that is already known to those skilled in the art.